Do We Dare?
by Sarah Rose Serena
Summary: Sara pays an unexpected visit to the foundry after leaving town. Unexpected in more ways than one, because she's up to something, and Oliver really doesn't like it. "Stop," he growls, low and tight and harsh in warning. She tips up her chin, steps closer, saying stubbornly, "I would. But I'm Felicity. And Felicity doesn't stop." Oliver/Sara, but mostly Oliver/Felicity by proxy.


**Do We Dare?**

[an **Arrow** story by _Sarah Rose Serena_]

_"Hey, Ollie? You ever feel like roleplaying could be good for the soul?"_

: : :

Oliver hits the lights to find Felicity's Iron Throne occupied. Descending the stairs, unfastening his suit jacket apart, he sees a glimpse of smooth feminine legs, one crossed primly over the other, not as pale as he expects, exposed from the hem of a professional pencil skirt, hugging tight to subtle curves up thighs and hips to a nice waist. Tucked into a loose button-up blouse covered in eclectic patterns draped off slim shoulders that should be slender. A subtle but noticeable distinction. Those shoulders should be less strong than they look now. More delicate. The black-framed glasses are sitting differently. The sleek ponytail of soft blonde hair isn't _quite_ right either. But the picture is convincing enough to stop him dead in his tracks when the chair at the computer bay swivels around to face him and the woman seated in it catches his eye, glinting with playful deviousness behind the lenses, her head canted just so, her soft lips in the shape of a slightly wicked grin. She leans back in the seat and drops a hand to the armrest with a slightly sultry air about her, watching him expectantly.

The sight is startling. And all wrong.

"Sara," he says, stopping to clear his throat when his voice comes out too husky. "What exactly is it you're doing here?"

"Nobody is coming in tonight," she tells him, and her tone is odd, soft and low like usual, but almost not deep enough to be hers. She's trying to sound lighter, like Felicity, and the speech pattern is just shy of perfect for what she's aiming for. "_You_ aren't supposed to be down here." She pauses, emphasis on her lips, moving from the previous grin into a less self-aware curve, a faint gentle smile that matches the bat of her fair lashes, which is supposed to be unconsciously cute, sweeping sexy with its obliviousness, but she doesn't get that quite right either. Enough to tighten a hard knot of wary discomfort in his chest, though. "But I knew you would be. So predictable, Mr. Queen. It's rather depressing."

"Did something happen?" he wonders, still regarding her cautiously.

Something _must_ have. She isn't even supposed to be in town. Something must have happened between her and Nyssa, specifically, if the tone she takes with him now means anything.

"Nope," she replies, drawing out the pop of her P. She swivels halfway back to the computers and delivers a few short clicks to the keyboard, closing out whatever windows she'd been working within. Before she turns her head back toward him, his gaze catches her fingernails, recognizes the exact match of that green from Felicity's polished manicure yesterday. He's observant. He notices almost everything. Even if he acts oblivious. Which is why he doesn't miss the cadence she adopts, doesn't miss what she's doing when she says softly, quickly, "Just running a few diagnostics, trying to figure out what's making my babies lag behind lately, because I _know_ it isn't this new OS. This thing is phenomenal. And anyway, what're _you_ doing here, Oliver? You're supposed to be at dinner. I told you it was a bad idea to meet her at La Maisonette. You know the violin accompaniment bugs you, and the cramped seating makes you all restless and unpleasant. Uh. Not that I know anything about your dating habits. Tell me there isn't some crazy emergency that'll come busting down the doors, because Digg is busy, like seriously busy, and I am _not_ interrupting his first full night with Lyla in two months, which means you won't have proper backup, and I so am not confident that my nerves can handle that right now. They're just a tad overstimulated at the moment—"

"_Stop_," he cuts her off, a low growl of graveled voice and the opposite of indulgence. She doesn't do it right but it's driving him crazy. "I don't know what this is about, but I'm not playing along."

"Oliver." Eyes wide, voice quiet and half hurt, she blinks innocently at him, pushing out of the chair, shoving the rectangle frames up the bridge of her nose with a fingertip. She says his name like she thinks Felicity might. It's off. Still bothers him. "I don't know what you mean."

There is no talking to her when she's like this. He doesn't have the patience for it, not when she's at _this_ of all things, whatever it is she's trying to accomplish. She should know better than to use Felicity in her games. To drag Felicity into whatever her problem is. She deserves more respect than that. He can't talk to her when she's acting this way, looking this way, so he pushes out a heavy breath and turns away from the woman, moving toward the chrome workstation scattered with his arrow welding. He breathes in through his nose, lips in a tight line, and loosens his tie as he feels her approaching from behind him, her stride slow but unhesitating. He hasn't glimpsed this side of her since before the island. He thought it was gone. Can't say he's thrilled to see it surface.

"Oliver," she murmurs in an undertone, a breathy heartfelt sound that hits its mark for the first time tonight. He screws his eyes shut for a second, not trying to hear Felicity in her voice, but tensing when he does. Feminine hands land lightly on his shoulders, her breath hitting the back of his neck as she pulls his jacket off, guiding it smoothly down his arms before he can stop her. "Talk to me," she pleads, and it isn't Sara at all. "Whatever it is that's bothering you, I want to help." She leans in, arching on her toes, her lithe body pressing flush into his back. He feels the heat of her through his dress shirt and it amps up the temperature of his own, mingling together where the real Felicity would feel cool, would combat the almost fever of it, because both their systems run hotter than most people. Her arms wind around him to jerk off his tie with a deft tug. Fingers working the buttons of his shirt undone from the collar down. "You know I could," she says, lips whispering against the skin of his throat. He is tense against her press, unyielding but frozen in place, and the more she talks, the more his anger wavers into something harder to understand. "If you ever let me in, I could help. You know that. Don't you?"

"_Sara_," he growls suddenly, dangerously serious in low warning. Trying to remind himself as much as he's biting back at her in tightly wound fury. He brushes her hands off, spinning around to face her, towering over her in decidedly hostile intimidation. "Stop."

"I would," she counters, tipping up her chin, a faint quirk of one eyebrow mimicking his IT girl just about perfectly now. "But I'm Felicity. And Felicity doesn't stop." She steps into him, removing that last bit of distance he'd put between them when he turned, her hands on his belt buckle and the fire in her eyes not to be denied. "Not when she sets her mind to something."

He catches her wrists, his fingers a bruising band around the soft skin, stilling her effort just as she gets the belt unfastened and starts to yank it loose. Their eyes are locked and a battle is playing out here harder than if they'd hit the mats full force. The slight tick of his neck as his head jerks to one side and his clenched jaw shifts, expression tight in its searing blankness, completely shut down. The stubborn tilt of her determined face upwards. The unwavering dedication to her act. The slight bitter edge beneath its contradictory genuineness. Neither one is ready to back down. But when she shifts her hips against him in challenge, letting out a small sigh, wrists twisting in his harsh grasp, her spine arching backward like a strung bow, bringing their lower halves firmer together as she yanks the belt free and unsnaps the clasp of his slacks with a flicking thumb, he's the one to bend. To break. In a sudden swerve of emotion, the intensity of his displeasure with her turning fast to something less passive, to something punishing. Anger lashing out as he half gives in to the confusing pull of baser instincts she's called up inside him. Crashing down into her as she strains to meet him, his mouth slanting harshly over hers, bruising lips and her hips, his hands catching hold of her form to spin her around, lift her up, and slam her down hard onto the workstation. Pushing and pulling at each other in selfish ungentle need, hers against his while they meet and match up, or close enough at least to complicate things.

Sara is bending back across the chrome, her hips pistoning into him when his fingers splay and slide up her legs, rough frenetic motions shimmying the tight skirt up her waist out of his way, dragging off the flimsy scraps of lace boyshorts that rip and sliver under his careless hands before being tossed aside. She spreads open for him, hugging him to her in a fierce breathless insistence, her knees digging into his sides as her calves hook around him, fingers fumbling in a rush as she shoves his slacks apart and attacks his mouth again. Fingers in her hair, ruining the ponytail, curving behind her head to pull her closer as he presses down from above, hard body to hard body nothing like the softness it would be if this were real. Too much muscle between them, and too much _take_ without an equal give, both rock hard unforgiving jagged edges and nothing selfless or graceful to smooth them over.

The glasses are getting in the way. They get all askew and then they clink and steam and blur and she isn't used to the weight of them, to the adjustment of having something on her face like this and it is really bugging her, he can tell, with the frustrated huff of her irritation as she cranes her neck back away from him to knock them off. Except that he stops her, catching her hand at her temple, caging it in his as he presses himself deeper between her thighs and drives inside of her with one smooth sudden thrust. Familiarity making it thoughtless.

"No," he growls, stilling her more with the rough rasp of brusque command than the fact that he is pushing up into her now, stretching and filling her with throbbing need. Overheated and electric both. "Leave them on."

His fingers hurt where they're fixed atop her knuckles, squeezing painfully with a distracted flex of unrestrained strength, and his blue blue eyes are burning hotter than his body into her, striking cerulean darkened with desire, with a dangerous storm of emotion, and suddenly she can't breathe looking right into them. Tongue darting out to lick her lips, parted with their panting against each other, she swallows and nods shakily, dropping her touch to grab onto his shoulder, digging in harsh to corded muscle when her head throws back and her spine bows taut again. He is thrusting into her with sharp powerful jerks, pressing down on her, his head bent low and his eyes downcast away from her face. The bristle of his shadowed jaw scratching soft sun-kissed skin makes her shiver, leaving reddened raw beard burn where he grazes down her throat and her collarbone after he tears the stupid blouse open. His hands gripped in white-knuckling severity echo the cuttingly taut coil of his body, one at the edge of the workstation, practically denting chrome, another on her hip then the small of her back then her thigh, driving fiercely into her as control splinters, overtaken by the ferocity of that rough animal anger always inside of him. That volatility beneath the still waters.

She used to pretend to be Laurel. Before the island. When she was feeling particularly resentful, particularly neglected, needling out the truth that she was never the one he wanted, not his first choice. She was easy and fun and there was just something about Sara. But she wasn't _The One_. The one they would die for. The one they would love forever. Even if just from afar.

It used to be Laurel, this game of hers, and now it's not.

: : :

Sara doesn't like this about herself.

There is nothing wrong with a little roleplay. A little exploring of the complexities of human emotion, of human lust and want and yearning. But she doesn't like what it says about her, how she knows what it means that she does this when she feels that odd combination of bitter about herself and frustration at everybody else.

He unravels before her, reaching release with the impact of a car crash and coming apart around it, his fingers making marks on her body, leaving imprints of his intensity, his turmoil. It matches her own, and yet is completely and unavoidably nothing like hers, but she still feels understood. Feels _connected_, like she isn't as alone as she feels, because Oliver gets it. She's glad to have an ex like him. But he really pisses her off sometimes. Because he doesn't see it. He doesn't _do something_. He could. Unlike Sara, Oliver actually has the option to reach out. To change things for himself for the better. If he would only just make the choice. And she resents him for that. She wishes she had that. She's stuck. And trying like hell to find get out from under the isolation, the island, when he has his way right in front of his face and he won't take it. Because he is too damn stubborn. Too damn scared.

She knew Felicity envied her, and she could understand why, but she just wishes she could've told her not to. Told her _why_ she shouldn't. Truth is, Sara envies Felicity. The sweet hacker feels overlooked, unseen, undervalued, because she has absolutely no idea how important she is, what an amazing thing she is. Sara was his girlfriend. Sara had him, could have him again, but she'll never be his girl. What they have was always going to be temporary. She would never _always be his girl_. And the part of her that is in some way still Sara Lance, pre Queen's Gambit, who envied her sister, who resented her sister for being the one getting Oliver Queen's attention, getting the boy she had a crush on, her ultimate crush, has her half wishing things were different. That he would look at her the way he looks at Felicity. The longing in his eyes, behind that mask, when he looks at her, when he thinks no one is watching. And she knows he feels exactly the same way, wishing things could be different for him, so she never resented any of that. Besides, another part of her has been envious of _Ollie_ for just as long as she's envied Felicity, feeling like her whole world might be different if she had a Felicity, if she would always be _her_ girl, someone so radiant and wonderful with unwavering loyalty and devotion and belief in her like Felicity's faith in _him_. Something that grounding and uplifting always reminding her of her own humanity, of the light and nice things in an ugly world, a tether tugging her back home when she gets lost in the darkness.

It kind of kills her how lonely Felicity feels. How much she doesn't understand. They're all like that, but it's so wrong for Felicity to feel it too, so wrong for her to be touched by that. Sara feels kind of like she, of all people, should be above it. She should be spared.

: : :

The next day, Felicity walks distractedly up to her computer bay, fingering the pair of eyeglasses poised there on the chrome corner of it. "Huh," she says, glancing around the foundry, her fair ponytail swishing softly with the movement. "I was wondering where these got off to."

Oliver doesn't turn around from where he's pounding on the practice dummy, sweat slick and body wound so rigid with tension it could break. He doesn't say a word.

* * *

_AN: I ... don't know if I know what this is.  
_


End file.
